I have just finished reading El Coronel No Tiene Quien Le Escriba (Nobody Writes to the Colonel) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It tells of an old couple in a remote village of an unnamed South American country. They are slowly dying of poverty, or at least the hunger and illness that it promotes. The Colonel’s military pension has never arrived, although his son, executed by the government for political reasons, has left him a splendid fighting cock.
The Colonel’s wife tries to convince him to sell the bird, but he refuses, insisting that his pension is still on its way, even after fifteen years. So they get hungrier and sicker, closer to death.
The Colonel still won’t sell his beloved chicken.
The final word of the book is ‘mierda‘.
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